A few corrections to Actions sections

[Bearwere]

no, I'm not a diehard, and this particular case actually matters little to me. It's only my opinion on how a fixpack shoud be built. Just keep in mind that there could possibly be pst mods that use replace_action("CreatePartyGold",..), or alter_trans_action, and such a change could possibly break them, while hardly anyone would make a mod dependable on exact amount of gold of a certain creature.

That's all just mind games, of course, and possibility of such things to occur is very low.

Anyway, good luck with your fixpack, I hope it'll be finished to the time I'll be ready for my next PST run)

[Qwinn]

It's only my opinion on how a fixpack shoud be built. Just keep in mind that there could possibly be pst mods that use replace_action("CreatePartyGold",..), or alter_trans_action, and such a change could possibly break them,

 

Another fair point, and if I were doing something for a much-modded game out there it might well make the difference... in this case though, I'm unaware of any other WeiDU'd mods for PS:T out there, other than the G3 Tweak Pack (which shouldn't conflict with this, and since it doesn't seem to be being maintained anymore I'm producing my own tweak pack anyway).

 

The lack of WeiDU mods for PS:T is a big reason why I'm doing this, in fact - hopefully having a WeiDU'd fixpack will encourage other modders. I can understand why few want to get involved in it without a WeiDU'd base to build on top of.

 

And oh yes, unless you plan your run in the next two weeks or so, it'll be ready, as will my Unfinished Business (with about 9 components) and my tweak pack (with four). They're all pretty much done with initial coding (and I'm pretty confident about it), the only thing I have to do left is this bit we've been discussing here, and my fix to the lobotomized Dangerous Angles Thugs. Everything else I pretty much ever planned to do with this is done. If it weren't for this, my testing would've probably started in the morning. And it still might.

 

Thanks for your thoughts! Hashing this stuff out is fun in it's own right

 

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Okay, I've thought about it some more, and yeah, I'm going to do what I planned, though luckily I'm actually finding surprisingly few cases where it's needed.

 

But In the end, this is the way I'm justifying it: If someone came along later, after I released my Fixpack and said: "If I don't interfere with Xanthia, she gives me 500 gold from "a pouch at her side", but if I kill her, she drops no coins at all. That seems like a bug.", I can't think of a good counterargument. Saying "I have to presume the designers intended it that way" or "fixing it might interfere with other mods" would be a lame copout. So, I'm fixing what would be a pretty reasonable bug report ahead of time.

 

Qwinn

[Miloch]

If someone came along later, after I released my Fixpack and said: "If I don't interfere with Xanthia, she gives me 500 gold from "a pouch at her side", but if I kill her, she drops no coins at all. That seems like a bug.", I can't think of a good counterargument.

Maybe she was hiding the coins in some sort of, eh, extraplanar cavity that the casual looter wouldn't ordinarily be able to, uh, access?

 

Heh. I'll admit, the counterarguments sound pretty lame, especially when you'll be paving the way for any future WeiDU PS:T mods... existing PS:T Tweak Pack excluded, which seems to include only a few scraps from the BG2 Tweak Pack...

[devSin]

There is a pretty important question I'm curious about, though... if a conversation EXTERNs to a party member, do the actions stay as actions of the person you began dialog with, or do they become that of your party member?

Actions and triggers are always evaluated relative to the character running the current dialogue. If you EXTERN to Annah, then everything from her dialogue is being run on Annah (and switches to the appropriate character if you EXTERN elsewhere). I.e., if it's in ANNAHJ.DLG (or whatever), then Annah's the one doing it; if it's in DHARLOTD.DLG (or whatever), then the harlot is the one doing it.

 

If Annah ran GivePartyGold() and was in the party, it probably wouldn't work (in the BG series, any gold in the creature's gold stat is transferred to the party pool when they join the party), but CreatePartyGold() would work.

[Qwinn]

Thanks, devsin, that's what I thought. Annah is doing the GivePartyGold that should be done by the Harlot, so it's a bug that needs fixing.

 

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Bah... this is just silly... if Annah spots her pickpocketing from you, it will 100% lead to the Drunk Harlot going hostile and calling for help, no matter -what- you do, even if you slap Annah down, tell her you don't believe her, don't take your money back and politely tell the woman she should get away (from Annah). Totally irrelevant, you still get the same response as if you totally back up Annah and take all the Harlot's money, which is: "The woman takes a step back, then suddenly starts screaming at the top of her lungs!", then goes hostile and aggroes the area on you (or tries to, I haven't gotten there with Annah to test how many other toons actually respond to her Help() call, but still).

 

I -hate- crap like that... no way to know if it was intended, but it seems damn silly and inexplicable. But I'm sure if I touched that I'd get complaints. Sigh.

 

Qwinn

[Miloch]

But I'm sure if I touched that I'd get complaints.

I doubt it... sounds wacky to me. You can always stick it in your tweak pack if it's questionable as a fix.

[Qwinn]

Hmph. Well, since I seriously can't figure out a smooth way to reconcile the issue of getting the GivePartyGold out of Annah's dialogue with keeping the first and only return to the Harlot's dialogue immediately resulting in combat, I think I'm going to be removing that wackiness as a consequence of that fix. Call it my one and only "stealth fix" in the Fixpack. Well, it would be a stealth fix if I hadn't just mentioned it in a public forum. But you didn't read this. Seriously, you didn't. And no one will ever know... muhahahahaha...

 

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Actually, the GivePartyGold fix sweep has had one pretty happy outcome.

 

WARNING: SPOILERS

 

Unless you enjoy playing psychopathic players, that overall fix probably won't make much difference in your game... with one real exception. In the Alley of Dangerous Angles, the best path is no longer a complete no brainer - you can score Krystall's 1000 coppers by killing her, not just by taking her side. Previously, pretty much everyone, with or without meta gaming knowledge would side with Krystall, and if they didn't, they seriously lose out big time. Now the neutral and evil paths aren't so wildly less profitable than the good path. I consider this a more balanced and very happy outcome of applying this fix. Just for the record.

 

This, combined with the Unlobotomized Thugs fix (the last thing I need to do before testing, heh) will make the Alley of Dangerous Angles -much- more interesting with the Fixpack installed, rather than a boring no-brainer hack and slash area. Yay.

 

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Heh! Ok, I'm an idiot. In the several times I've played PS:T, I never realized you could enter the Alley from the Marketplace zone - the only entrance to it I ever found was from the Mortuary zone. As a result, I never got to speak to the Razor Angel tolltaker before.

 

Now that I see that, their behavior makes a -LOT- more sense to me. I mean, it's still kinda annoying that, when you walk in from the Mortuary side (where you're first accosted by the Shivs), the first 20 or so Razor Angels you meet say "Just wait right here, someone'll come to talk to you shortly", which never actually happens until you haul yourself to the area exit I never discovered before. Similar behavior from the Shivs if you come in from the marketplace side and never go all the way to the Mortuary exit to meet -that- tolltaker.

 

So the only change I'm going to try to make (we'll see how well it plays) is assigning a second tolltaker for each side closer to the middle, near the first instances of each gang that you'll meet if you came in the -other- entrance. They'll only automatically approach you if you haven't paid the toll for their gang yet.

 

The more developed dialogues that I was seeing that I thought I'd be replacing most of the thug's dialogues with was just the Razor Angel tolltaker dialogue that I'd never seen in game before.

 

That will make what the other thugs say make much more sense... but that's not much of a "delobotimization", sorry if I got anyone's hopes up for something particularly cool in that respect, heh. Oh well.

 

On the bright side... that means... I'm DONE! I can start testing now! Wewt!

 

Well, okay, after Lost. *popcorn*

 

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Never mind, never mind. Sigh. It'd been so long since I planned to do this that I forgot some of what I'd discovered that made me choose to go this route.

 

There -will- be a makeover of the Alley thugs, and it will be using only original game files (I forgot about the two other files I originally saw), and it -will- go in the fixpack. It would go in UB, except that I really do consider that "Stay right here forever" bit to be a bug that needs fixing, and the files I'll be using actually follow the proper naming conventions and the two files used in game don't, leading me further to believe that it was just a bug that they weren't used.

 

Qwinn

 

EDIT: Bah, I've changed my mind 3 times already, why not one more. Fine. It'll go in UB. Needing to replace all 7 state triggers in the new files makes it qualify as unfinished, I guess.